Scandal Is Probably Ending, Here's The Latest

There is "drama" on TV, and then there is Scandal, which has been hurtling along at a feverish pace in its shortened Season 6. Fans may only be along for the ride for a short while longer, though, as it's being reported Scandal will conclude its run on ABC after Season 7. Four more years! Four more years!

Nothing has been made official by ABC, so no one should go off downing all the wine bottles. (Both the readily available ones and the hidden ones.) At this point, TVLine is reporting that multiple sources are calling the next season Scandal's last. If that info holds true, then it was allegedly creator and TV workhorse Shonda Rhimes herself who made the decision to pull the plug, and ABC was said to be agreeable. It'd be kind of hard to get Scandal to audiences without Rhimes' involvement, but stranger things have happened.

It's not exactly an out of the ordinary choice for Shonda Rhimes to have made. The writer and producer has been vocal in the past about not wanting to keep Scandal going for as long as something like Grey's Anatomy, since its plot-forward storytelling is harder to extend than more serialized tales. All this White House madness has been happening for six years already -- at least in "viewer time" -- so to keep it going for several more would possibly be stretching the bounds of reality even further.

And so, looking at the cast shot above, which features at least one person who got severely beaten to death, one can start to relish in the speculation about what others will likely meet a horrendous fate in that is possibly its last season. Will it happen to Jake? To Abby? To Huck? The show won't kill off Olivia Pope, right?

It's clear that ABC wasn't looking to close the door on Scandal just yet, though, as Season 7 was ordered up a few months ago. Perhaps conversations were had at the time about this potentially being the last season, or maybe Rhimes took some time after the renewal to figure out how to perfectly map Scandal's grand final act onto the impending season. The big question now is, "How many episodes are we going to get?"

For now, Scandal airs Thursday nights on ABC at 9:00 p.m. ET. Head to our summer TV schedule to see what will be hitting the small screen once Olivia Pope's latest round of shocks and controversies has ended.

RELATED: The Unsettling Reaction Emilia Clarke Had To Daenerys' Last Scene